“The discovery of a great Norwegian writer, Rune Christiansen, with a novel bordering on poetry and fairy tale … It’s this autumn’s poetic object: a nail. A completely banal nail, neither more nor less. But through the pen of Rune Christiansen, this unassuming metal object is loaded with rare intensity … His images show up unexpectedly as glimpses of something visionary, twinkling for a while, before they retire back into the concrete precision of the everyday. … Where other would have hammered the nail all the way in and squeezed out intricate existential didactic texts, Rune Christiansen has, thanks to his sharpness and finesse, written a novel with the unreal, but still so intense consistence of the dream”
Transfuge, France

“In this story made up of short chapters, the Norwegian poet and novelist (born 1963 and translated into French for the first time) follows the development of the main character step by step. With light strokes, he portrays successively her states of mind, her actions, her outlook on the world, which changes with her experiences. The reader gladly follows this minute and patient exploration of the inner landscape of a human being still in the making”
Le Monde, France

“In this poetic fairy tale, where reality dissolves and slips through into the fantastic, Rune Christiansen carefully describes a young girl “who no longer has a place in her own life” and her return to the land of the living, along a road she paves with redeeming dreams and blissful friendships”
L’OBS, France

“After the sudden death of her parents, the young Fanny is confronted with her grief. The lonely fugitive finds refuge with the priest Alm and the strange Karen … A story full of shadows and silence, from which a luminescent poetry gushes in soft words”
Aimer Lire, France

“Grief is marvelous. That doesn’t make it happier, but it sets down certain benchmarks you need to pass to reach happiness. And it also justifies the strange title Fanny and the Mystery of the Grieving Forest, by the Norwegian author Rune Christiansen, born in 1963 and first known as a poet, a fact that won’t surprise any reader of this novel with an atmosphere of the everyday and the fantastic”
Liberation, France

“Rune Christiansen was a poet before he took on the novel genre, and that can be felt on every page of Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest. He highlights the healing qualities fairy tales as well as the power of words when they are filled with poetry … Rune Christiansen, translated into French for the first time, is an esteemed writer in Norway. His books doubtless deserve to be discovered”
Arts Libre, Belgium

“It’s a story of grief that Rune Christiansen gives us, a story where death, which Fanny is consumed by, is everywhere. Still, this is not a dark story – it’s more of a clair-obscur – and no pathos drags it down … No sentimentality, but a lively, vivid sensitivity … By drawing from the sources of fairy tale and fable, Rune Christiansen invites us into the world of a complex , shifting character, fumbling and stumbling, he describes her joys and her sorrows, her missteps and her experiences, with finesse and discretion, soberness and reservation, nuances and power. Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest is his first book which is translated into French: Let’s hope it’s not the last, and that we can soon read more of his novels and his poetry”
La Cause Littéraire, France

“The Norwegian Rune Christiansen has written an exceptional story about grief and returning to life, where the forest, fairy tale and loneliness are weaved together. We are carried away by the very first pages: the prose is clear, sensitive and economic, coloured by a highly visual poetry and isolated images charged with a subtext that calls on the magic of stories … [Christiansen] never ceases to surprise, he leads us elegantly astray, uses poetry to transform grief into a rite of passage … With infinite gentleness, Rune Christiansen steers the story towards Fanny’s return to our common world”
Le Courrier, Switzerland

“Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest is among the saddest and most uplifting books I’ve read. This story of a grieving young woman is told in short bursts of lustrous writing crisp as aquavit that leave the reader seeing the world anew. Christiansen is taking on the big themes, love and death, but I know what side he’s on.”
Michael Redhill, Scotiabank Giller Prize winning author of Bellevue Square

“Rune Christiansen’s Fanny and the Mystery of the Grieving Forest is one of those special stories I find myself petting once I’ve finished, as if it were a wee forest creature I have fallen in love with. A shimmering musing on grief, Fanny is both ecstatic fairytale and Gothic novel—beguiling, haunting, and erotic in equal measure. There are very few books I would put in the category of heart places, but this is certainly one.”
Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, author of All the Broken Things

“An exquisitely written novel of grief … Rune Christiansen shows yet again why he is one of Norway’s leading literary stylists … Reading Rune Christiansen is a pleasure unlike any other … [He] has a sense of words most writers can only dream about … a thoughtful, aesthetically outstanding novel about the small and big questions in life”
Aftenposten

“Christiansen’s stylistic confidence and authoritative writing lift the text to a level rarely reached in Norwegian contemporary literature … Both as a novelist and a poet, Christiansen has a penchant for atmospheric scenes and phrases that feel almost studied … where daily life is almost held up as something solemn in an unobtrusive, but intense tone. But in the aftermath of overwhelming grief, this suddenly seems exactly right. The fairy-tale like atmosphere […] balances between empathy and respectful distance, down-to-earth details and existential pathos … deserves not only literary prizes but also an audience far greater than the Norwegian”
Dag og Tid

“A magnificent novel … gripping, poetic and thought-provoking … Christiansen has written an incredibly wise and beautiful novel. It reminds us that life is dream, fairy-tale, myth, fable. That it’s harsh realities: crisis, shock, traumas and existential choices. But also: The forest, the sea, the breaking waves, the light. And above all: Love and the possibility of transformation”
6/6 stars, VG

“Christiansen at top form … Christiansen offers aesthetic pleasure and a short visit to the realm of the dead … He offers greater darkness, more barbs and shows if anything more inventive imagery and stylistic sophistication than ever before”
Dagsavisen

“Christiansen writes brilliant prose, with poetic sentences I have never seen before … A young person’s search for love and security is described with minimal effects, which still twist the story far out beyond the limits of the real. It is gripping, and the significance of dreams in the novel has a cleansing effect inside the tragedy. But the novel also contains an everyday realism that shows the author’s highly original way of using surprising metaphors in the middle of the ordinary. This is an astounding novel!”
5/6 stars, Adresseavisen

“Christiansen’s prose is exquisite; expansive and tight, filled with pathos and humour. He made his debut as a poet, but has more recently distinguished himself as a brilliant novelist … The novel’s imagery and descriptions of nature are captivating … a moving study of friendship, being alone and unexplored grief. In its movements between the everyday and the intangible, it is a very good representation of life itself”
5/6 stars, Dagbladet

“Slowly, slowly Rune Christiansen explores human life. With open curiosity and a wonderful sense of melody, he transforms the trivial into something sublime … Christiansen’s prose is so full – of emotions, referances (to poems and fairy tales, music, myths or film), of cool observations and concrete descriptions. All the time he is searching for a deeper layer in our human existence … It’s not about exposing the mystery. It’s about living with the mystery as part of being a human being”
NRK Bok

“From the first page of the novel Christiansen draws up a large space for the reader’s thoughts … that life takes shape through accident and necessity, in each individual’s search for freedom and belonging, is shown by Christiansen in an insightful way in his new novel. In a way which makes it significant to the reader”
Klassekampen